International Law in The Netherlands in the Period 1938–1970

Extract

1.—Description and characterization—such should be the double aim of this short contribution in the nature of a “visiting-card” handed out at the start of the 1970 Hague Conference of the International Law Association. The participant in the Congress should, indeed, be somewhat orientated as to the place international law occupies in the Netherlands community. The period chosen is the one from the 1938 Amsterdam Conference to the one convened in The Hague. Were it not for this link with two I.L.A.-Conferences, the period might otherwise be deemed to be entirely arbitrary. Yet, it happens almost to coincide with a new phase in Dutch political history. Having stood aside from partisan international politics as much as it could ever since the Napoleonic era, and, in particular, having been neutral in the First World War, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, centre of a far-flung Empire, in 1940, i.e., after 125 years, all of a sudden found itself involved in what was to become World War II. The event came as a heavy blow to a nation which, throughout that one century and a quarter, had been content, without any ambitions on the political scene, quietly to administer and develop its ancient heritage. The cause of international law could not fail, in those circumstances, to be dear to its heart. Small countries, and especially those on the lee side of history, are easily given to the devotion of orderly processes. They cannot but benefit from them. In the case of the Netherlands, however, material interest alone, as it appears, does not account for the totality of its attitude towards international law. Over the centuries, the country's outlook was also determined by spiritual factors. Grotius' personality—he was a theologian as much as a lawyer—most happily bespeaks this state of mind, even though no Dutch writer after him succeeded in blending the two as evenly, and in such lofty manner, as he did. The spiritual strain in Dutch writings on international law after Grotius never filled more than the role of an under-current, stronger or weaker, but its presence is not to be denied. Its influence may also be discerned in the Netherlands' League of Nations policy. Dutch official enthusiasm for the League was sufficiently cautious, in the meantime, to allow the Netherlands in 1938, together with a number of other powers, no more to subscribe to the obligatory character of sanctions as provided for under the Covenant.